My PizzaPopolis Complex Explained

Reason #1046 I'm proud of my Dad

My Dad's friend Bakar (the muslim Somalian refugee I'd blogged about eaerlier) stopped by and got a chance to meet the family. You'll notice in this shirt that my Dad is wearing a shirt that says, "I'm Awesome". Now normally in the Kurt family we would joke and mock anyone wearing this shirt. Heck, we'd mock the pope for wearing his silly hat. Before you mock, here's the story behind the shirt.

As I'd mentioned in the other post, my Dad has helped Bakar since he came to this country as a refugee with nothing. He's worked with him to get a job, his first car, cell phone, helped him get Cochlear implants (Bakar is deaf) and braces.

My Dad uses the same skills that made him great at his job to help Bakar make it in America. What would the middle east conflict look like today if Muslims saw Americans giving and helping sleflessly? My Dad is living out what Jesus calls us to by helping the poor and hurting.

Bakar got this shirt for my Dad because this is the best way to express the way he feels about my Dad. He simply thinks my Dad is awesome and thought that this shirt was the best way to express it. Can you blame him? My Dad wears this shirt proudly, and he should. We're all proud of him.

Usher Trip

To celebrate our 18th anniversary, I got Cathie tickets to see Usher in St. Louis.  Why St. Louis?  Because it was recently voted the most violent city in the US?  Maybe... Or... Some buddies of mine down there have connections to get great seats to some of the R & B shows.  Jon and Beth watched the kids for us and we flew out on Friday morning to St. Louis.  Trips like these almost make my travel worthwhile, as we were able to use hotel and flight points to basically make the trip for nothing.

We were picked up by my friend's driver, in their sweet party bus:


We stayed at the St. Louis Downtown Hilton, right across from the Arch.  The manager at the Hilton was kind enough to send us a bottle of champagne in celebration of our anniversary.  Diamond status has it's privileges.

It was freezing cold when we got to St. Louis, so Cathie needed a slightly different outfit.  We walked to the closest clothes store to our hotel to get a new outfit.  The only type of clothes shopping I like to do with my wife is for lingerie (for her) and to pick out something to wear  to an R&B concert.  We passed on this vest for some reason:

We had dinner at Lombardo's and then headed over to the concert to see Usher.

I was clearly in the minority in the concert, as it consisted of 95% women.  It's not my style of music, but I enjoyed the fact that Cathie enjoyed herself.  Miguel opened the show, followed by Trey Songz and then Usher.  I was impressed that Usher can dance ever better than I can.

Here's a quick video synopsis of the concert as seen from my iPhone. We'll see how long YouTube lets me keep it online without editing out the audio due to copyright restrictions:


The girls sitting next to us explained that Washington Ave was the place to go hang out after the concert, so we walked over there and went to the bar.  The first bar we went to we were twice the age of everyone in the bar, so we decided the that the hotel bar was more our speed.

The next morning we slept in.  I ran up to get Cathie a latte and bagel from Panera, but we didn't get out of bed until about 3pm.  We sat around and watched the MSU football game until it was time to head to our Couples Spa Retreat at the four-seasons hotel.


The massages were amazing, and we hung out in the steam room afterwards.  We met up later that evening with a friend of mine that I used to work with, Michelle, who Cathie had gotten to know through Facebook.  She took us out to Sub Zero, a sushi & vodka bar. Michelle has been managing a country music singer, Johnny Henry, and we had the chance to hear his music and meet him that evening.  It was a fun night.

We were picked up the following morning at the crack of dawn and made it back home early.  We met my brother Jon half way in Grand Ledge to pick up three kids who had missed their Mom and Dad a lot:

Thanks again to Jon and Beth for watching the kids, and everyone else who helped out, including Cathy Hannigan & Kevin and Susan!